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Windows 8 and 8.1 Pass 15% Market Share, Windows XP Drops Below 20% Mark
An anonymous reader writes Everyone is well-aware by now that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have not seen the impressive adoption rate of their predecessor. Yet the duo had a particularly good run last month, finally passing 15 percent market share together. Together, they owned 16.80 percent of the market at the end of October, up from 12.26 percent at the end of September. Windows XP meanwhile dropped a whopping 6.69 points to 17.18 percent. The biggest catalyst for these changes was most likely back to school sales in September, which are better reflected in the data after students use their new machines for a full month.
Come on, it's 2014, and slashdot is still using that broken windows avatar for Windows stories.
Not only it that "joke" not funny anymore, it's not even true. Windows might not be great, but its hardly broken like in the days of 95 or 98.
It is long past time you grow up and use the correct logo.
FTA: "These gains did not come at the expense of Windows 7, which still managed to grow 0.34 points to 53.05 percent."
s/©//g
It's interesting that while 8.1 is around 10%-ish, 8 is still about 5%. Considering 8.1 is a free update for registered copies of 8, how many of the un-updated copies of 8 are pirated versions?
What would be the point of pirating Windows 8?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
and I swore a lot less at Win98 than I did at 8.0. Win8.1 is useable, but still bites at your fingers now and again.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
8.1 is not an automatic update. It requires launching the store, accepting the update and waiting for the lengthy download and install process to finish. I have seen plenty of Windows 8 PC's that nobody bothered to upgrade. Not a single person I have talked to still running 8.0 was even aware of the upgrade. It's not like they made a conscious choice to stick with 8.0, they simply didn't bother to even find out. Microsoft would have to make a greater effort to force them to upgrade through automatic update and continuous prompts that keep requesting permission to download and upgrade when they boot up to get this to change.
That's pretty much the one and only reason why most of these users have not upgraded on their own. 95% of those windows 8.0 users are simply not clued in to the fact an upgrade should be done. 4% likely had problems getting the upgrade to install or download so just stick with 8.0 rather than troubleshoot the issue. Lets peg 1% or less are those choosing to stick with 8.0 (good enough for them, corporate standard, too much trouble, not enough bandwidth to download, etc etc)
Based on past experience, most of those Windows 8 and 8.1 purchases are home and student based. Businesses are either exercising their Windows 8 downgrade rights and sticking with Windows 7 Pro, or holding out for a true successor, possibly being Windows 10.
Life is not for the lazy.
I thought linux is like 20%. One percent is sort of like "other" in my book.
Linux's market share in desktop PCs is pretty much a rounding error. Always has been and that isn't likely to change soon. You'll find plenty of linux in mobile and servers but not in desktop or laptop PCs.
Apple OS represents a culture and not a technical solution.
The popularity of MacBooks at Linux and Unix conferences indicate you are wrong. Mac won the desktop Unix battle. Consumer friendly GUI on top, with a lot of off-the-shelf commercial support. BSD Unix underneath, most FOSS applications run just fine on Mac OS X. Very few apps are Linux specific.
Personally most *nix things that I need to do can be accomplished on a Mac quite nicely. I mainly use Linux for embedded devices and headless servers sitting in the closet. I have a dual-boot PC with Windows for gaming but I rarely boot into Linux.
HP is offering an 11" windows 8 notebook w/ 2 meg RAM and 32 Gig SSD for $199. Oh, and it comes with 12 months of Office 365 AND 12 months of 1 TB OneDrive cloud storage... And it can run any any Windows application... The appeal of the Chromebook is what, exactly?
For $50 more, HP will sell you a similar laptop with a 13" touch screen and a slightly larger form-factor.
Ken
The appeal of the Chromebook is what, exactly?
It doesn't run Window 8.
i would rather deal with unsupported XP with viruses than the steaming dog turd called windows 8. it was the most infuriating UI I have ever had the displeasure of using, and I lived through the rise and fall of macromedia flash websites
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I would posit that new sales (where the consumer doesn't have a choice) is responsible for the Win8 numbers rising. From the feedback I get from my friends and acquaintances it doesn't seem to be from consumers making a "choice" that they want Win8. And I really have to question XP dropping below 20%, at least in a business environment. I generally see about 50/50 between Win7 and XP among our customers and the businesses we come in contact with. And everywhere I go XP still appears to be the dominant OS behind retailer's POS systems. We have upgraded a fair number of our customers to Win7 Pro (as many as we could convince) but there is still more than 20% of them on XP. Not sure who "venturebeat" is, but look around, the numbers just don't seem quite accurate.
If you prefer little squares with rounded corners, you can buy a Mac.
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